Daily Authority: 👩‍✈️ New Snap drone

🤔 Good morning! Before we start, you have to guess how much Apple made from iPhone sales in the first three months of the year. Just a guess! Answer below…

Pixy takes flight

Snap has a tiny little camera drone that ties in with Snapchat so you can take selfie pics and video from a perspective your smartphone can’t reach. It’s called Pixy. Aw!

• Pixy is $230, only available in the US and France for whatever reason.
• And it takes off and lands on your hand.

Now! There’s no one better than my colleague Jonathan Feist, Drone Rush boss (and occasional Daily Authority editor!), to tell you why it matters and why it doesn’t. Here’s Feisty with the real deal info.

Feist says:

Fun new flying cameras are always exciting. The idea of a super portable drone is great, and the newly announced Snapchat Pixy immediately caught the eye.

However, we are forced to view this new flying smartphone camera for what it is: a new entry in an all-but-failed segment of the drone market, and a camera that is tightly wound into the Snapchat ecosystem.

The Pixy appears to tick all the right boxes for an ultra-portable drone.

• Like it or not, Pixy is an aircraft, subject to FAA regulation for all outdoor flights in the United States.
• Mid-range mobile camera sensor.
• Removable and rechargeable batteries.
• Very easy-to-use controls.
• Weights 101g, meaning it avoids the strictest drone laws.

There’s more to it, and the predefined flight modes limit what you can do with the aircraft, but the purpose is to capture epic selfies, so the options are about right.

Safety:

Safety is always our number one concern at Drone Rush. To that end, we must always talk about those pesky drone laws (none of the following applies if you are flying indoors).

• As we mentioned above, Pixy is an aircraft, subject to FAA regulation for all outdoor flights in the United States.
• Meaning by the letter of the law, people must acquire FAA TRUST certification (which is a free test, at least, and open to all ages) and get authorization (there are apps that help).
• The rules are more strict for businesses. Pixy has some details here.

Otherwise: 

• Now that’s out of the way, did you know that there have been dozens of other drones over the years that look and act almost the exact same way as the Pixy?
• The Hover Passport gained enough interest that Apple put it in their stores.
• And the AEE Selfly actually folded down into a smartphone case to protect your phone.
• But people retired those drones faster than their smartphones.
• Still, we look forward to putting the Snap Pixy to the test, and we hope that the popularity of the social media platform can inspire the next generation of drone pilots. Fly safe!

HUAWEI foldable

Huawei’s Mate XS 2 fold launched this morning. I covered what it means a week ago and today much of that was confirmed:

• It’s an out-folding device, i.e. one screen instead of two, with refinements over the previous models. More of an evolution of design.
• It’s Snapdragon 888 powered, due to Qualcomm sourcing limitations affecting HUAWEI.
• And it’s China-only, starting at 9,999 yuan (~$1,515) for the 8GB/256GB variant all the way up to 12,999 yuan (~$1,969) for the top-end 12GB/512GB model.
• Expect more to come: our team is very likely to want to get their hands on it to see the latest tweaks from HUAWEI.

Also: The HUAWEI Band 7 and Watch GT 3 Pro launched.

Roundup

😬 OnePlus Nord N20 review: Better hardware, decent battery life, but crummy haptics, fingerprint reader, camera performance, and a mono speaker are bad while the software update situation is terrible (Android Authority).

🤷‍♂️ The Nothing Launcher for Android is available now, but it’s bare bones, doesn’t give any clues about the coming phone, and I don’t really know why it came out like this (Android Authority).

👉 OnePlus 10R launches: A riff on the OnePlus Ace, which is a realme GT Neo 3… (Android Authority).

📈 Apple reports best March quarter ever with new records for iPhone and Mac, though some iPad slowdowns due to the supply chain. Basically, Apple made nearly $100 billion so far this year, already, $50B of that from the iPhone. Crazy, but for Apple, completely normal. (The Verge).

👗 Alongside Pixy, Snap also put out this wild new AR shopping thing: try it on with AR (The Verge).

🎮 NVIDIA adds native M1 Mac support to the GeForce Now app (Engadget).

📦 Amazon Prime Day 2022 is now set for July, again in a 48-hour window, but the exact day hasn’t been confirmed yet (Android Authority).

👉 Layoffs begin at Netflix: a blog team on a just-launched blog got the rug pulled (Gizmodo).

📅 Blizzard will reveal the first Warcraft mobile game on May 3 (Engadget).

💰 Elon sold a bunch of Tesla to pay for Twitter (BBC).

🐶 Is dog behavior genetic? A team of researchers finds: not really, with a few exceptions. Also, there’s a cute photo of a Samoyed (Ars Technica).

🔋 Formula E’s new Gen3 electric race car: lighter, more powerful, more nimble, uses the latest pouch battery tech (Ars Technica).

🔭 Astronomers tease ‘groundbreaking result’ of Milky Way’s black hole: some kind of event on May 12, possibly a photo of what it looks like? (CNET).

🤔 “Is there any proof that foods grown with organic pesticides are “healthier” to consume than regular non-organic pesticides??” (r/askscience).

Friday Fun

I laughed (and applied to use DALL-E 2):

Have a great May 1 weekend,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.